Handmaiden Tales: Rabe
by DBKate
Summary: A tiny Rabe tale.


  
Category: Tiny Tales, Drabble, Vignette   
Rating: PG-13 (adult themes)   
Disclaimer: Lucas is God, I am Scum. And suing scum is an exercise in futility, I swear it. :-) 

Summary: A tiny Rabe tale.   
**--------  
HANDMAIDEN TALES: RABE  
by DBKate  
[dbkate2@aol.com][1]   
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Always buried within her books is how her parents described Rabe to their friends. Piles of datapad cartridges were strewn all over the house, then hidden beneath the pallet when her family started discarding them in despair. 

Despair over their only daughter becoming too smart to find a husband. 

Rabe was a daughter of courtiers in the court of Naboo and beautiful enough that her questing mind would only be a detriment to her father's desperate desire to marry her off above her station. 

"Why not like the others, Rabe?" her father would moan. "Pull your eyes out of those scrolls and look around you. The others look kindly upon the young men at court, why not you?" 

"Stand straight, don't slouch so," her mother commanded as the datapad would be pulled away and soon Rabe had to hide that too, finally taking refuge in a nearby wooded area, huddled at the foot of an ancient junip tree, her cloak hood raised, her texts clutched gratefully to her heart. 

It was there that she met him. 

A man youthful of face, old and wise in demeanor. She felt his eyes on her before she saw him, a strange shadow spark of prescience, and he'd bowed to her before removing his cloak hood and revealing himself for what he was. 

A Jedi knight, newly made, his hair still shorn in the style of an apprentice. 

He was polite and charming, interested in what she was reading. Shyly, she showed it to him, and they talked then, long into the evening, then again on the next day and the day after that, discussing philosophy and physics, poetry and art. 

By the fourth evening their eyes met, the datapad fell aside, and they talked no more. 

She was eighteen, he, perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty, it was hard to tell. She didn't tell her parents; Jedi knights were not considered suitable husbands for any woman, let alone the daughter of a respected courtier. 

The knight warned her that he couldn't stay, and while she understood his words, her heart refused to listen. She gave her soul as well as herself to the Jedi and he was gentle and kind, passionate and tender, and Rabe's hopes grew. 

But a month later, his mission was over and he took his leave of Rabe as politely as he'd greeted her that first day in the woods. Her breath caught somewhere within her chest as he uttered his goodbyes and she struggled for days on end to take in enough air to ease the terrible clutching ache that lingered in her heart after he was gone. 

She took to her bed and her mother sat beside her, silent and knowing. Bathed Rabe's feverish forehead and cheeks, told the rest of the family to leave her be, and whispered hope to her night after night, until Rabe thought she might be ready to believe that her life was not over. 

Some months passed and Rabe returned to her faithful books, letting them give her the only solace she could find. She ignored everything else; the court, her family ... 

Even the sickness to her stomach that began to plague her each and every morning. 

Irritably, she pushed her mother aside and claimed it was nothing. The food of the court was too rich, the weather was too hot -- it was nothing. 

Finally, her mother asked her pointedly when her last cycle had passed, and Rabe's life suddenly changed forever, for it was then she realized that she was with child. 

A child whose father was gone with the stars. 

Twenty weeks later, Rabe's son was born, and she named him Ishtial, or, "Forgotten One" in Naboo. He had his father's coloring, but her eyes, and there was no scandal once it was discovered who the father was. 

"To bear a Jedi child is an honor," the older courtiers insisted. "Soon, he will be brought to the great Temple and raised there. Have no fear, his father will return for him. They always do." 

Rabe began to pray this wasn't true and she held her infant son close, night after night staring at the stars, unable to sleep. But it was true -- the Jedi _did_ return and bowing, he bundled his son within his cloak then kissed Rabe's hand in thanks. 

She stood stock still as they boarded, watched the transport ship take off and dryed eyed, she turned away from the hangar and never looked back. 

That night, she threw her datapad in the refuse bin and presented herself at court. She danced and drank with the young men there, always smiling and laughing. She indulged in scandals, gossiped and caroused, and never again did she mention the Jedi and her child. 

Not even to the new Queen who became her mistress after the old king was removed from office. 

Not even when two other Jedi arrived and delivered them from a deadly invasion. 

Not even when a young knight named Anakin Skywalker visited the court one day and sat beside her mistress in the garden, asking politely what the Queen happened to be reading that afternoon beneath the shade of an ancient junip tree. 

-------  
finis 

**all comments always welcome! [dbkate2@aol.com][1] **  
  
_**THE JEDI APPRENTICE LAIR http://www.geocities.com/cicilean/ja/front.html**_  
  


   [1]: mailto:dbkate2@aol.com



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